Erdogan Wants to Be Turkey’s Lone Strongman. What If He Gets What He Wants?

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a presidential and parliamentary
election June 24 – jumping the gun by more than a year – the outcome seemed
foreordained.

After all, the country is under a state of emergency. Erdogan has imprisoned
more than 50,000 of his opponents,
dismissed 140,000 from their jobs, jailed a presidential candidate, and launched
an attack on Syria’s Kurds that is, unfortunately, popular
with most Turks.

But Erdogan’s seemingly overwhelming strength isn’t as solid as it appears,
and the moves the president is making to ensure a victory next month may come
back to haunt him in the long run.

An Economy Headed for a Fall

There’s a great deal at stake in the June vote. Based on the outcome
of a referendum last year, Turkey will move from a parliamentary system to one
based on a powerful executive presidency. But the referendum vote was very
close, and there’s widespread suspicion that Erdogan’s narrow victory
was fraudulent.

This time around, Turkey’s president is taking no chances. The electoral law
has been taken out of the hands of the independent electoral commission and
turned over to civil servants, whose employment is dependent on the government.
The state of emergency will make campaigning by anyone but Erdogan’s Justice
and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the National Action Party (MHP), problematic.

But Erdogan called for early elections not because he’s strong, but because
he’s nervous about the AKP’s traditional strong suit: the economy. While
growth is solid, unemployment
is 11 percent (rising to 21 percent for youth), debts are piling up, and inflation
– 12 percent in 2017 – is eating away at standards of living.

The AKP’s 16-year run in power is based in no small part on raising income
for most Turks. But wages fell 2 percent over the past year, and the lira
plunged 7.5 percent in the last quarter, driving up the price of imported
goods. Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded Turkish bonds to junk status.

Up until now, the government has managed to keep people happy by handing out
low interest loans, pumping up the economy with subsidies, and giving bonuses
to pensioners. But the debt keeps rising, and investment – particularly the
foreign variety – is lagging. The Turkish
economy appears headed for a fall, and Erdogan wants to secure the presidency
before that happens.

The Kurdish Question

To avoid a runoff, Erdogan needs to win 50 percent of the vote, and most polls
show him falling short, partly due to voter exhaustion with the endless state
of emergency. But this also reflects fallout from the president’s war on the
Kurds, domestic and foreign.

The AKP came to power in 2002 with a plan to end the long-running war with
Turkey’s Kurdish minority. The government dampened its suppression of Kurdish
language and culture, and called a truce in the military campaign against the
Kurdish Workers Party.

But in 2015, the leftist, Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP) broke
through the 10 percent threshold to put deputies in parliament, denying the
AKP a majority. Erdogan promptly declared war on the Kurds. Kurdish deputies
were imprisoned, Kurdish mayors were dismissed, Kurdish language signs were
removed, and the Turkish army demolished the centers of several majority-Kurdish
cities.

Erdogan also forced a new election – widely seen as fraudulent – and re-claimed
the AKP’s majority.

Ankara also turned a blind eye to tens of thousands of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda
fighters who crossed the Turkish border to attack the government of Bashar al-Assad
and Syria’s Kurdish population. The move backfired badly. The Kurds – backed
by American air power – defeated the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, and the Russians
turned the tide in Assad’s favor.

Turkey’s subsequent invasion of Syria – operations Olive Branch and Euphrates
Shield – is aimed at the Syrian Kurds and is supported by most Turks. But, no
surprise, it’s alienated the Kurds, who make up between 18 and 20 percent
of Turkey’s population.

The AKP has traditionally garnered a substantial number of Kurdish voters,
in particular rural, conservative ones. But pollster Kadir
Atalay says many Kurdish AKP supporters justifiably felt “deceived
and abandoned” when Erdogan went after their communities following the
2015 election. Kurds have also been alienated by Erdogan’s alliance with the
extreme right-wing nationalist MHP, which is violently anti-Kurdish.

According to Atalay, alienating the Kurds has cost the AKP about 4 percent
of the voters. Considering that the AKP won 49.5 percent of the vote in the
last national election, that figure is not insignificant.

The progressive HDP is trying hard to win over those Kurds. “The Kurds
– even those who are not HDP supporters, will respond to the Afrin operation
[i.e., the invasion of Syria], the removal of Kurdish language signs, and the
imprisonment of [Kurdish] lawmakers,” HDP’s parliamentary whip Meral Danis
Bestas told Al Monitor.

The HDP, whose imprisoned leader Selahatt
Demirtas is running for president, calls for a “united stance”
that poses “left-wing democracy” against “fascism.”
The danger is that if the HDP fails to get at least 10 percent of the vote,
its current seats will taken over by the AKP.

An Outside Chance of Failure

Erdogan has also alienated Turkey’s neighbors. He’s in a tense standoff
with Greece over some tiny islands in the Aegean Sea. He’s at loggerheads
with a number of European countries that have banned him from electioneering
among their Turkish populations for the June 24 vote. And he’s railing
against NATO for insulting Turkey. (He does have a point – a recent NATO
exercise designated NATO member Turkey “the enemy.”)

However, Erdogan’s attacks on NATO and Europe are mostly posturing. He knows
Turkish nationalists love to bash the European Union and NATO, and Erdogan needs
those votes to go to him, not the newly formed Good Party – a split from the
rightwing MHP – or the Islamist Felicity Party.

No one expects the opposition to pull off an upset, although the centrist and
secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) has recently formed an alliance with
the Good Party, Felicity, and the Democratic Party to ensure that all pass the
10 percent threshold
for putting deputies in parliament.

That electoral
alliance excludes the leftist HDP, although it is doubtful the Kurdish-based
party would find common ground with parties that supported the
jailing of its lawmakers. Of the party’s 59 deputies, nine are in jail and
11 have been stripped of their seats.

There’s an outside chance that Erdogan could win the presidency but lose
his majority in parliament. If the opposition does win, it has pledged to dump
the new presidential system and return power to parliament.

Loaded Dice

The election will be held essentially under martial law, and Erdogan has loaded
all the dice, marked every card, and rigged every roulette wheel.

There’s virtually no independent media left in the country, and there
are rumors that the AKP and the MHP have recruited and armed “supporters”
to intimidate the opposition. A disturbing number of guns
have gone missing since the failed 2016 coup.

However, as Max
Hoffman of the Center for American Progress notes, the election might not
be a “slam dunk.” A run-off would weaken Erdogan just when he is
preparing to take on a number of major problems other than the economy:

Turkey’s war with the Kurds has now spread into Syria and Iraq.

In Syria, Assad is likely to survive and Turkey will find it difficult –
and expensive – to permanently occupy eastern Syria. Erdogan will also to
have to deal with the thousands of Islamic
State and al-Qaeda fighters now in southern Turkey.

Tensions are growing with Egypt over the Red Sea and Ankara’s new alliance
with Sudan, which is at odds with Cairo over Nile River water rights.

There’s the strong possibility of a U.S. confrontation with Iran,
a nominal ally and important trading partner for Turkey.

There’s also the possibility – albeit a remote one – that Turkey will
get into a dustup with Greece.

And last, there’s the rising price of oil – now over $70 a barrel
– and the stress that will put on the already indebted Turkish economy.

The Turkish president may get his win next month, but when trouble comes, he
won’t be able to foist it off on anyone. He will own it.